willhines.net

• Elvis Costello is doing a really cool podcast for iTunes where he talks about his first 10 years. It’s free and fun, Elvis fans!
• AOL did a pretty funny look at iPhone mania featuring myself and my co-worker who sits in the cubicle behind him. There’s a lot of me in it which is likely what interests me.
• I’m so in love with Google Reader that I stopped using My Fellow Jerks. However, for what it’s worth, My Fellow Jerks averages about 200 visits a day even without me obsessively checking it — not bad. Anyway, I now subscribe to about 50 blogs and I’m ready for more if anyone has any suggestions.
• I watched The Girl [...]

4 Comments

More Sketch and Awe at UCBT — 7pm tonight! Get out of work and stop by.

Cast: Sarah Burns, Jeff Hiller, Lennon Parham, Ben Rodgers, Charles Sanders

Writers: Susannah Becket, Anthony King, Chris Kula, Megan Neuringer, Shannon O’Neill, Gavin Speiller, Joe Wengert, Will Hines and the cast.

And now I will arbitrarily assign nicknames to all of those people and link their names to the first result from Google Images that has nothing to do with them:

Sarah “Desktop” Burns,
Jeff “Rock Quarry” Hiller,
Lennon “Slingshot” Parham,
Ben “Chuckles” Rodgers,
Charles “Charles Sanders” Sanders,
Susannah “Converyer Belt” Becket,
Anthony “Martini” King,
Chris “Dishwasher” Kula,
Megan “The [...]

3 Comments | Tags: sketch, ucbt

Forget Square Pegs, playing Burger Time, re-watching V or even making references to old Gary Gygax manuals. If you want to be a TRUE retro 80s nerd, you should bust out your Radio Shack TRS-80 or your Commodore 64 or your Apple II+ and play Zork. It’s National Zork month (thanks to Rob Webber for alerting me to this). Wired has a good intro to Zork.

“Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.” Let’s get this GOING!

Edited to add: Eeep! You can play RIGHT NOW! Play Zork online.

P.S. “Zork” is a text-adventure. It’s a pre-cursor to games like “King’s Quest” and “Lesiure Suit Larry” in which you give commands to an avatar [...]

17 Comments | Tags: computers, if

Three games.

1. Enter a friend’s apartment. As you walk by his/her shelves take note of a random movie, CD or book. Then after a few minutes earnestly ask if he/she has a copy of said media. “Say, do you have a copy of the special edition of The Emperor’s New Groove?” People sometimes laugh.
2. When someone expresses a half-hearted opinion while instant messaging with you, immediately respond with a sentence telling them that they in fact have the strongest possible version of that opinion. Like if someone says “I guess I kinda liked Die Hard,” you type back “You love every scene in Die Hard.” I really love doing that. To date, no one has responded in a way to indicate they [...]

15 Comments | Tags: annoying

Have, like, MILLIONS of my friends decided to go home to visit their parents this week? Especially the chicks! Am I right? I think I might be right!

I could easily not be right.

6 Comments

So I was riding home on the L train Saturday afternoon, when I saw Billy Hot Chocolate wearing a ridiculous-looking all lavender outfit (t-shirt, shorts, head and wrist bands). Turns out he was going to a Wet Hot American Summer party. I can’t remember the movie well enough to know how an all-lavender jogger outfit fits in, but I didn’t really need an explanation since Billy is a man silly enough to change his last name to “Hot Chocolate.”

Billy asked what I was up to and I explained that I was getting back from buying a coffee bean grinder. That sounded so lame compared to wearing an all-lavender outfit that I kinda amped up my excitement about my [...]

5 Comments

My co-workers and I were filming outside the Apple Store on 5th Avenue yesterday. It was a fake news bit — filming tightly on our actors, though with the Apple Store in the background. About five minutes in, a security guard came over and (politely) asked us to stop filming. Then he corrected himself and said “Well, please don’t film the building.”

We acquiesced, but I was infuriated. The building is outside in a public space. Really public actually: Fifth Avenue and 59th Street of New York Fucking City. They didn’t build it there to be hidden or demure. They WANT it noticed. We weren’t being rude, we [...]

14 Comments | Tags: corporations

My computer here at work makes me change my password to login every 20 or so days, and I can never repeat an old password. It’s annoying. I’m sure the IT department would argue that it’s for security, to make sure no one can get into my computer. However, I posit that computer systems in general are overly worried about “people” finding out what your password is.

I say that because I sit next to an unassigned computer, which all of our free-lancers and interns use to check their email. Since they’re not full-time, they do not have a password to access. So I give them mine. And almost all of the time, no one can type it in — EVEN [...]

5 Comments | Tags: computers

Happy Father’s Day to Jerome Bradford Hines:

That kinda looks like an oddly-square set of underpants. It’s actually a trash bag, captured here because on Christmas my father’s OCD requires him to discard all wrappings as soon as they hit the floor. I think he gets more satisfaction from throwing out those wrappings then he does receiving the presents.

Random facts about my father:

• Grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Remains a die-hard Browns fan.
• Spent most of his career negotiating contracts for an aerospace technology company. Today he’s an aide to special education teachers in Westport.
• To my memory, could not bear to intentionally lose any board game.
• Is a decent painter.
• Owns a nice house in Wilton, Ct [...]

8 Comments | Tags: dad

I reset the play count of all songs in my iTunes library.

3 Comments | Tags: computers, music